Pretty much. Apparently these people have never bought a phone with a 2 year contract in their lives, let alone an exclusive phone to the particular carrier that can only function properly on that network. When the iPhone was jailbroken and could be unlocked to T-Mobile, it wouldn't receive Push notifications at all.

I could be wrong, but by reading the article, it seems Apple created software to Keep the at&t version of their phone locked onto at&t. meaning if my contract is up, and i wish to cancel my contract but keep my phone and go to, let's say, net10, then i am unable to because the software only permits the phone to run on at&t's network. again, pardon me if i' mistaken.

IDK about then, but AT&T and Apple had a 5 year agreement that didn't allow this if I remember correctly.

If you pay full retail for the phone now, it's factory unlocked.If you are out of your contract, you have to submit a request through AT&T and they will send you instructions on how to unlock your phone after they submit the information to Apple.

I'm fairly certain if you pay full retail now, it's still locked and you have to go through the unlock process. You can start that process immediately after purchasing the phone at full retail, though.

Yeah, if you buy through AT&T that's how it's done. If you buy from Apple, then they sell their phones already unlocked at full retail. I think part of it is that AT&T just stocks up iPhones that are already locked to their network, so they need the extra step.

They should unlock it, but if you but the phone out right, AT&T has a bad habit of saying they can’t unlock it because it’s (your phone) on a contract.You can even tell them you can produce a receipt showing that you paid full price, & they will not care. This is on any phone, not just Iphones.

You couldn't....not legally anyway.....there was no way for at&t to provide you with an unlock code because we didn't have one..there was literally nothing in the database...

But the iPhone was literally the ONLY phone we could not unlock, every other phone had an unlock code that we could get, the iPhone ONLY had no code....and if we tried to search for it our database told us that no unlock code existed...

The rules at at&t when I worked there were pretty loose, basically we were allowed to unlock any phone provided we could verify that it wasn't stolen (a simple search on the IMEI could determine that), they were at least 6 months into a contract and the customer had no past due balance....during my time at at&t I unlocked literally...(continues)

More likely the request was made before at&t reps were allowed to unlock iPhones....when I worked there it was absolutely forbidden, we were instructed to tell customers that iPhones cannot be unlocked and were warned that if we attempt to assist a customer in jail breaking the phone so that it could be unlocked, we would be immediately terminated, neither were we allowed to tell them where they could go to find instructions online, nor even to talk about jail breaking AT ALL...the policies related to the iPhone were very strict.

But they didn't until just recently...when I worked for at&t (quit in August 2010) an iPhone could not be unlocked for any reason, ever, off contract. There was a lot of speculation about who was to blame for it, when customers asked us at at&t we said it was Apple, and Apple told customers it was at&t.......I don't know the real truth....at at&t there was (I have to assume still is) a great deal of bitterness and resentment against Apple, so we tended to reflexively blame Apple for everything that customers complained about....

Because the iPhone is the biggest target....honestly this is stupid....if you don't want to deal with carrier locks, buy an unlocked phone and be done with it, but if you buy carrier equipment you have to play by their rules....I don't think that's unreasonable....

I agree they should have went after the carries or all of the manufacturers or both. But its the carriers faults for subsidies the phones not the manufacturers. Its probably some Apple fan boys who wants his iPhone 5 to work on T-Mobile and know nothing of the unlocking process or why phones are locked to begin with.